Chess

[Richard Frost]

Bird shows up in History when there isn't any.  Also rotates.

Enter key can be used in place of mouse button.  Also, mouse cursor does
not need to be on board to use arrow keys.

All sets can be dimmed.

[Richard Frost]

New feature - rotate pieces instead of board, for Human vs Human play, in case it's a tablet
or a portable that can hinge open 180 degrees.  Settings:Invert:Board/Pieces.

Using Enter as a mouse click key was messed up in the last version.  Fixed.

[Richard Frost]

Wasn't showing valid squares to move to when playing Black side.
I see 5 downloads in the past few days, so I guess it's worth keeping
it updated.

[Richard Frost]

Sep 11, 2021

1) Downsized 2 chess sets, so they load much faster.
2) Lots of small graphics improvements.
3) More, but I forget.  Another price of being uncertain of how often    updates are ok here, when old
    code is never overwritten.

[Richard Frost]

Update:

1) full Linux compatibility (all files lowercase and uses sensors for temperature)
2) better throttling
3) nicer appearance
4) 3 clocks to choose from
5) blessed by a garden gnome in Walla Walla Washington

6) "Style" button to sequence thru 12 styles (colors, sets, clock type, etc)

[Richard Frost]

"Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"

I can't help you.  I'm up in Canada, helping Santa wrap presents.
But while you're down there, play chess by using the new rotate
feature (F12 or use the menu).  When rotated +/- 90 degrees only
the board and main menu are visible, but that's usually enough.
This rotate feature, at 180 degrees, is also handy for human vs
human play, esp. for a tablet.

I'd like to know the top MPS (moves per second) everyone gets.
My best computer, a 12 year old dual processor Lenovo portable,
only manages 1.4 million.  And it's only the Lenovo that throttles
the FPS if/when there are processes like video in the background.
My other computers, 2 Dells and a Toshiba running Linux Mint, stay
at about 60% CPU load.

tf.bas & minimax.bas added to zip.  Sorry I forgot before.

[Dav]

Hi @Richard. The chess.bas is looking for the tf.bas include.  I can't seem to locate it in the package.

- Dav

[Qwerkey]

@Dav Dave, regrettably you have messaged the wrong Richard - ID @Richard Frost required , not @Richard

@Richard Would there be any chance to modify your ID (to something like RichardX where X is the first letter of your family name)?  This is not the first time that members have mistakenly messaged you in place of another.  The given name alone as ID is easy to misdirect.

Qwerkey (given name Richard!).

[Dav]

Sorry about that.  Apologies to all the Richards.

- Dav

[Richard Frost]

7z updated above.  I sure miss the simplicity of a batch file calling ye olde pkzip. 
I could still do that, sure, but DOSBox is a bit slooooooow.

And I updated the file AGAIN because QB64 v2.0.2 , which I just got, didn't like
one of my functions.

The temperature sensing works in XP and Linux Mint.  With Win10, it only works
if the program is run as administrator.  So for Windows I throttle the FPS if the CPU
load is high, not the temperature. 

Temperature is obtained by shelling to wmic with Windows, or sensors with Linux.

[Dav]

Wow such a cool chess game, @Richard Frost!  It contains so much goodies.  Very professional work. 

I've already made a desktop icon for it for daily playing.   

Btw, I had to edit line #97 to point to the mem library. it was pointing to /chessdat, and mem isn't in that folder.

- Dav

[Richard Frost]

1) pieces move smoother
2) was error in viewing funny pix ("Z") - changed a lot of vars to _byte for more speed
3) setup menu available while computer thinking, with the last 2 items not available
4) setup and file playback menus should pop up smoother/faster

I do not understand that mem.h problem.  It *is* in \chessdat, and in the main directory
too.  Works fine for me with XP and 10 (not declared for Linux).

C'mon, someone with a hot machine tell me what speed they get.  I'm up to 1,879,497
moves per second on an 2007 (ancient!) Toshiba A200, albeit after running it over 24
hours.  Average speed is maybe half that.  The speed will start going down if I ever
make it smarter.

Updates:
Dec 16: Substantial CPU load decrease by eliminating some unnecessary string assignments.
Dec 30: Nicer background.
Jan 2: Graphical piece selection for promotion, and last captured piece is highlighted for a bit.
Jan 3: Added CPU load to graph for Linux version.  Because it's fun to watch squiggly lines.
Jan 4: Added another background.
Jan 6: Added a button (lightning) for bare bones mode, which plays faster.  Plus better mouse handling.
Jan 18: Added Fellippe and Spriggsy, with appropriate catchphrases, to the funny set.  Also loads faster.

[Dav]

Works like a charm!  Watched it play itself a couple times while eating breakfast.  It got 1,523,529 top MPS on an old Lenovo T430 under windows (while running other intense tasks - like writing a disk image to USB).

- Dav